Sorry but we needed to use the blacklist says Balfour Beatty

Balfour Beatty ran reference checks with the now-defunct Consulting Association on approximately 15,000 construction workers between 2004 and 2008.

Mr Peasland told the Scottish Affairs select committee, that’s investigating the level of blacklisting inside the construction industry, that Balfour Beatty checked the credentials of employees because they feared “harassment and bullying” by some workers, coercing others to stroll off site or deliberately work slowly.

Mr Peasland said: “We believe that on the time we were suffering huge amounts of disruption in our business from unlawful acts on our sites and that may have caused major issues in the case of disruption for our customers, for our staff and for our own workforce. We felt that this was the way to prevent unlawful acts on our sites from happening.”

Pressed on what unlawful acts he feared, he added: “We are talking about unofficial action by workers and such things as harassment and bullying on sites.” Acts of violence have been experienced on sites, he said.

However, he said that Balfour Beatty now had a code of ethics that claims no references are taken without the individual’s knowledge.

He said: “We do regret using the Consulting Association. It would not have happened, and we do apologise to each of the workers and their families who were littered with this.”

Over the process his three hours of grilling, Mr Peasland assured MPs that compliance officers were now in place making sure that his company doesn’t use another industry blacklists or referencing services.